Day One meld the classic songwriting craft with a sort of hobo b-boy attitude; the new in sound from the way out west. Day One are Phelim Byrne and Donnie Hardwidge. Their debut album Ordinary Man, is an album full of hazy midsummer grooves with wonderfully catchy melodies. It is a record which slips into your subconscious, and works a little voodoo on your tongue at the most unlikely times. The influences on Ordinary Man may be there but the sound is 100% Day One.
It was two years ago that Phelim and Donnie officially teamed up as a duo, immediately putting together a demo under the name PhD, a monicker they were forced to drop because the name was owned by a musician from the 70s. The boys gave a tape to someone they knew who subsequently became their manager. He, in turn, passed the tape on to Massive Attack's 3D who fell for it straight away. They were immediately signed to Massive's own Melankolic label. Having recorded the LP in Bristol their music came to the attention of Mario Caldeto Jr (acclaimed producer/engineer of The Beastie Boys). Day One subsequently de-camped to LA where they teamed up with Mario to mix Ordinary Man, an album of laid back urban camp fire songs from the back streets of any city anywhere.
Day One met while busking the boards of their Bristol home town in an ill-fated seven piece funk band. Realising that the two of them had a natural chemistry, a joint love of mad nights out bumming around bars, and generally getting up to mischief, Phelim and Donnie naturally turned into a songwriting partnership.
With the new found freedom of writing as a duo both Phelim and Donnie were able to draw on their own particular influences in order to develop a musical identity. Phelim's background was in hip hop. At the age of twelve the Irish lad could be found dropping rhymes with DJ Mad Cut on a pirate radio station. His style drew on De La Soul, early Nas and A Tribe Called Quest. Look deeper at his influences however and the major effect of his Irish roots comes to the fore. His father, a well known Irish musician in the 60's, instilled a love of Irish folk music in him. This influence is a powerful force in Day One's punishingly ironic lyrics; echoing as they do the Irish story telling tradition while honing in on life's universal experiences, which perhaps don't seem funny at the time, but are hilarious in retrospect.
As for Donnie, his own background is similarly drenched in music. As a youngster he took up piano. However thanks to the ever present influence of his Dad's jazz collection he was soon inspired to start playing guitar, bass and drums before finally getting into programming. His ambition was to combine the sounds of Dylan, Tom Petty, Miles Davies and John Coltrane and update them into a style relevant to the multicultural times he was living in.
Ordinary Man is an album to spend time with. It's a mixed bag of styles and sounds. Lyrically a song like "Waiting For A Break" finds Phelim at his most poignant: A song about those people who are always on the verge of doing something big. While songs like "Walk Now Talk Now" and "I'm Doin Fine" are raw with a sense of beauty underlining the songs with lush strings filling up the backdrop. Whether it's the pop sensibility of "In Your Life" or the quirky love story told in "Love On The Dole," Ordinary Man is full of stories that are at the same time timeless, yet very of the moment. The songs capture the experiences which all of us share, suggesting that, at the end of the day, none of us are that dissimilar. We're all waiting for a break.
